Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act 110 Stat. 1214 (1996)

• Author: Daniel Kanstroom
• Pages: 102-103

Page 102

On April 24, 1996, one year and five days after the Oklahoma City bombing, President WILLIAM J. CLINTON signed into law the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). The statute is extraordinarily farranging and implicates constitutional provisions from Article

Page 103

III to the suspension clause, the Fifth Amendment, and the FIRST AMENDMENT. AEDPA is also notoriously complex and not especially well-drafted. As Justice DAVID H. SOUTER put it in Lindh v. Murphy (1997), "in a world of silk purses and pigs' ears, the Act is not a silk purse of the art of statutory drafting."

The two most immediately effective features of AEDPA?drastic restriction of federal court HABEAS CORPUS review of criminal cases and broad expansion of the power to exclude and deport certain non-citizens?bore virtually no relation to the terrorist act committed by U.S. citizens which had spurred its passage and inspired its name. A more relevant but constitutionally dubious section prohibits the provision of "material support or resources" to groups designated "terrorist organizations." Other sections deal with victim assistance and restitution, JURISDICTION for lawsuits against "terrorist states," prohibitions on "assistance to terrorist states," nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons restrictions, plastic explosives restrictions, and various criminal law modifications relating to terrorism.

The restrictions on habeas corpus review in AEDPA were, in many respects, a codification of DOCTRINES already created by the Supreme Court and, as such, they are unlikely to be found unconstitutional in our era. However, AEDPA addresses issues such as delay, second and successive petitions, and finality with unprecedented rigidity and force and therefore implicates due process and other constitutional rights in new and often distressing ways. A sketch of AEDPA's main JUDICIAL REVIEW features includes (1) special court of appeals gate-keeping mechanisms and severe restrictions relating to second or subsequent habeas corpus petitions, (2) unprecedented deference to state court factual and legal findings, (3) strict new time limitations both on filing deadlines and federal court action on habeas corpus petitions, (4) limitations on evidentiary hearings in habeas corpus cases, and (5) special restrictions on habeas corpus petitions filed by certain state prisoners facing CAPITAL PUNISHMENT including a filing limitation of 180 days. To...